Fun Day

I don't do Mondays.

Mondays are out. They're evil and pestilent. I'll warrant half of the population expend most of their stress anticipating Mondays.

Not me. But there's a trade-off: not having a regular M-F job, I need not fear Mondays, but then again, a Monday might make or break my week. Yes, you M-F job people, you have security. But what about Sunday? Talk to me about Sunday, because it means Monday is coming. How can you realistically relax? Huh? Can't go on a bender. Oh, oh, oh God no. Coming into work with a raging hangover? Hey, as a recreational all-weeker, I'd rate that feeling as a minus-twelve. So, what are your Sunday options?

Fucked. So Sunday is fucked and Monday is also fucked. So where does that leave you? Friday, that holiest of days. Or Saturday, the day 'Hovah gave to sinners. But let's look at it carefully: Friday, you get slide-ass shitfaced. So Saturday, you're a wasted wreck, only suited to go to Reno-Depot and suck up a Price Club hot dog for lunch. Then it's home and your thinning dendrites feast noiselessly upon The Learning Channel until six, which is when you declare amnesty and go take a nap. Hey. Hey. HEY!!! Tomorrow's Sunday, asshole.

So, okay, a third of your week is fucked. What about the other parts of it? Not much left.

Tuesday you're really into work. You have to be, because of all the shit you left undone in anticipation of last weekend. So, work, work work. Home and actually feeling good because this is the first day you didn't feel like shit. Wednesday: make plans with the co-workers for this weekend!!! You asshole. A self-perpetuating never-ending cycle of horror. This is what you look at when you comb your hair in the mirror every morning.

But gamely, you plow on to Thursday! Happy Thursday! This is when you finally have the energy to go to the bank and the post office and mail that goddamn bill and call your grandmother. And you feel a little bit . . . good! Because tomorrow's Friday, fuckin' A! Fuckin' goddamn fuckin' A, tomorrow's Friday all over again! Yay!

And then there's Saturday.

Hy Ate Us

As you can tell, this blog has been officially on hiatus for about two months. Mostly because I'm busy taking care of the darling boy, but also because nothing culinary has come my way recently ever since the Atlantique steak fiasco. Boy, did that dampen my enthusiasm to the tune of $200.

No telling when the next culinary adventure will come along, but . . . in about ten days I will be off to California. About a month after that, I will be off to Japan. It's really endless, these trips . . . sometimes I just don't know how I do it. But I must.

I've been writing lyrics for imaginary songs. As of now I'm too lazy to put them to music but I might get around to it.

Mind If I Piss In Your Coffee?

Used to be when you went into a restaurant in Montreal, you were ushered to the back of the room if you were unfortunate enough to be a non-smoker. It didn't help, of course, but on top of that the sight of the smokers occupying the good tables next to the large bay windows coupled with their noxious fumes easily reaching you anyway made you very, extremely displeased.

So I smoked for ten years. I smoked a lot for ten years, like, uh, my life depended on it. But I don't any more. And I don't appreciate having to smoke when I don't want to, which is what I have to do when someone lights up next to me, or even 50 feet away from me.

So since the new non-smoking laws went into effect May 31, instead of the smokers getting the best seats inside the restaurant, they get the best seats outside the restaurant, on the terrasses that are the mainstay of hundreds of restaurants and coffee shops all over the city. Just walking by one on the street envelops you in a noxious plume of carcinogens, so imagine actually having to eat something in the middle of one.

Quebec just doesn't get it. There should be a blanket ban of smoking in all places where children can sit down on chairs. There, that makes it easy to understand, doesn't it?

God Does Play Dice

It was delectable garlic, melt-in-your-mouth, still wet on the outside, the inside almost delicately pink. It had been pulled fresh from the ground of a small farm lot in Nara, Japan, and I'd put twelve of the amazing bulbs into a plastic bag and into my suitcase for the long journey home, praying that Customs wouldn't smell it and take it away. They took away a bunch of things (see below) but they inexplicably didn't take the garlic. I was in luck!

The first meal I made with it was incredible; an amazing pasta aglio oglio in which the character of the garlic really shone. And I still had eleven and a half bulbs left!

Since they were so fresh, they were beginning to smell a bit musty from being cooped up in newspaper and a plastic bag, so I opened the bag and put it into an open box in a dim corner of the kitchen so the garlic would dry out somewhat. And then I planned my next feast: Spicy Garlic Shrimp with Fresh Rosemary served over Penne Pasta.

Salivating over what I knew would just be the best garlicky feast I had ever had, today I assembled all the ingredients and prepared all the ingredients except for the garlic, which I wanted to leave for last. Slicing garlic is one of the most sensual kitchen duties I know. I went to get the box. It wasn't there.

I think the cleaning lady threw it out yesterday.

More Japan Photos

Thanks to Blork's prodding, I actually took a spare 5 minutes out to learn how to use Flickr, so I posted some of my Japan photos there. Thanks, Blork!

Japan Photos

Much like Blork, I also took lots of photos when I went to Japan recently. The beauty of the digital is that you can snap away like a madman and never have to worry about paying for it (assuming you have enough card space.)

Unfortunately, I don't know how to use Flickr, and don't have the time to investigate it yet, so I'll have to store large files on my own server and have Blogger resample the ones I send to it.

I went through all the photos last night (365 of them, not even close to Blork) and picked out three I'm going to make 20x30" prints of, have them dry-mounted at Atelier 68 on St. Laurent for about $53 each and put 'em up on my wall. They're all landscapes, and I decided to make a triptych out of them (larger size version is on my server.)


In this photo, they're much closer together than they're going to be on the wall, but I was struck by looking at them after I'd chosen them that all the lines seem to line up — ie. the distant mountains proceed in the same line as do the nearer mountains and even the foreground shapes, vaguely. And I hadn't purposely done a panorama shot — these were from completely different vantage points.

If I ever get a life, I'll learn how to use Flickr and put up some more.

The Sweet-but-burned Smell of Satisfaction

Marvel: Abu Baby is just about now reaping the rewards of his lifelong wish to enter Hell. Have a safe and long, long trip, dude!